RHUN AP IORWERTH outlines Plaid Cymru’s immediate and medium-term policy goals
Latest editorial
Mass insulation meets the Jevons Paradox
A planned carbon capture storage plant sits uneasily alongside continued inaction on home insulation — how can we make sure any new ‘efficiency’ does not lead to greater consumption — and should we, ask ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and JOEL HELLEWELL
In England, there are nearly seven million homes with solid walls. Currently, less than 10 per cent of those have solid insulation. The situation is better for homes with cavity walls: out of 16 million, nearly 70 per cent have cavity insulation — although that means that five million remain without.
A row over Trotskyist factions exposes competing visions of organisation inside Your Party and the wider left, argues NICK WRIGHT
A growing coalition, Cymru Together, is challenging traditional politics – calling for practical plans that connect climate action with economic justice, writes BETHAN SAYED
ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT delve into the strange, active – and sometimes predatory – world of plants
While politicians fixate on defence budgets, the real answers lie in peace-building and economic justice, says ALAN SIMPSON
ANDREA BRADLEY highlights how a City of Glasgow College health and safety dispute is the subject of an STUC Congress emergency motion
IN 1865, the English economist William Stanley Jevons wrote a book called The Coal Question. In it, he considered a paradoxical fact about technological progress.
One might assume that increases in the efficiency of burning coal would mean that there would be a corresponding reduction in its use because less was needed to achieve the same aims. But as Jevons noted, “it is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.”
The Jevons Paradox states that increases in efficiency lead to increases in demand. A century-and-a-half later, it remains depressingly relevant.
Similar stories
Coal-fired stoves in traditional homes are the primary source of extreme levels of air pollution in over-crowded Ulaanbaatar. As more people become climate-displaced, the situation is likely to worsen, write SCIENCE AND SOCIETY
IAN SINCLAIR recommends an important and timely book for climate politics right now and in the future
The Communist Party of Britain’s Congress last month debated a resolution on ending opposition to all nuclear power in light of technological advances and the climate crisis. RICHARD HEBBERT explains why
